Huawei P9 and Xiaomi Mi 5 to both come with 5.2-inch AMOLED screens?

posted by Alan F. / Nov 16, 2015, 11:00 AM

Some specs for the Huawei P9 and Xiaomi Mi 5 have been found posted on Weibo. These are two eagerly awaited high-end handsets. Right off the bat, it appears that both phones will be sporting a 5.2-inch screen. Remember when the 4.3-inch screen on the HTC HD2 seemed to be tremendously large? Both will be AMOLED displays with 2K or 4K resolution.

The handsets go their separate ways when it comes to the chipset under the hood. The Mi 5 will be powered by the Snapdragon 820 SoC, which means it will feature a quad-core CPU with Qualcomm's own Kryo cores inside. The Adreno 530 GPU will be handling graphics. The Huawei P9 is said to be equipped with Huawei's home grown Kirin 950. Recently announced, the high-end chipset contains an octa-core CPU and the Mali-T880MP4 GPU. Both phones will come with at least 3GB of RAM, and both will have Android 6.0 pre-installed.

The information was found on the Weibo site belonging to Pan Jiutang, who is the head of research at the Shenzhen Huaqiang Electronics Research Institute. During the summer, Jiutang said that he expects the Xiaomi Mi 5 to be released late in the first quarter of 2016, as the manufacturer waits for Qualcomm to start shipping out the new Snapdragon 820 chipset. It has been 16 months since the Xiaomi Mi 4 was launched, which is a very long period between flagship models in this day and age. On the other hand, the Huawei P8 was launched last April.

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Sooner or later, all phones will be OLED. With proper calibration, OLED can be more accurate than LCDs and they inherently have advantages like better color grading, better brightness retention at large angles, better sunlight legibility due to thinner panel, true blacks and infinite contrast.
LCD will move to cheaper products until it ceases to exist. And when quantom dot becomes more popular, it will obliterate LCDs as it's objectively better than LCDs in all ways.

posted on Nov 16, 2015, 11:23 AM 1

Posts: 981; Member since: Jul 07, 2014

And yes before the fanboys jump, all amoleds have burn in issue if you leave it for a long time. Like notification panel due to portrait only. Yeah yeah you can avoid it, but it still needs to be solved.

posted on Nov 16, 2015, 11:29 AM 0

Burn-in is absolutely eliminated a long time ago. Any AMOLED from S5 generation doesn't have burn-in. Heck, I have an S4 for 2.5 years and no issues here. Newer gen AMOLED is even better in endurance over time. I guess it was an issue in the past, but not anymore.
Regarding your other point, let me reiterate what you're trying to point out. Are you talking about black clipping? If yes, then it's a firmware issue and can be fixed with software which linearly aligns the voltages of LEDs.
The black clipping is intentionally done to make the visuals more dramatic. It can be fixed via proper calibration and isn't really a fault of the OLED technology itself, but the calibration.

Posts: 2454; Member since: Apr 23, 2015

posted on Nov 16, 2015, 12:24 PM 1

Posts: 170; Member since: Oct 29, 2014

Check again. Try different blank colors wallpapers and you will notice a slight burn-in on the top bar. Not a big issue, but ALL oleds have that probs after years of use.
Thats why they don't put amoled into Notebooks, you would use the Browser, Excel etc. for hours a day, week. It will burn in very quickly.

posted on Nov 17, 2015, 5:41 PM 0

Posts: 1090; Member since: Feb 24, 2014

Durability might still be a concern. It's possible to for recent Samsung flagships to experience burn in. Any news on the progress of material durability?
Fingers crossed, Sony somehow resuscitates its crystal LED technology or someone else makes their own if OLED still has durability issues.

posted on Nov 16, 2015, 11:29 AM 0

Posts: 1168; Member since: Oct 05, 2015

I can agree with this mostly.
But the reality is that, true blacks really aren't as black as they appear on AMOLED panels. Black objects in real life do emit some small amount of light, and there is a large span or dynamic range at which we perceive blacks. AMOLED seems to not be able to do this currently. This is another reason AMOLED panels are claimed to have less realistic colors.
I think quantum dots will supplant both AMOLED and LCD technologies in the future.

posted on Nov 16, 2015, 11:40 AM 1

We don't simulate real world into screens. And anyway, the reflections from surroundings don't keep them perfectly black anyway.
However, in a room at night, it can really get as dark as an AMOLED screen, and them you start to appreciate it.

Posts: 177; Member since: Oct 08, 2015

posted on Nov 16, 2015, 5:56 PM 0

Posts: 226; Member since: May 15, 2015

Samsung the leader in Technology and innovation has shown the way, everybody has to follow.
Tim cook once blasted Samsung for using OLED screen, but I understand Apple also trying to bring out Phone with OLED display to survive by 2017. Really a slap on the face.

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